Felix Wald received his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (2019) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2021). Since 2022 he is working on his PhD in the research group "Real-Time System Integration" and in the "Power Hardware-in-the-Loop" laboratory at the Institute of Technical Physics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany. He is an active member of the "IEEE PES Taskforce on Solid-State Transformer Integration in Distribution Grids" and leads the "Grid Services and Features" chapter. His research interests include power hardware-in-the-loop validation and techno-economic analysis of power electronic transformers and asynchronous grids.

Experience abroad

Time period: March - August 2024
Institution: U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Location: Denver, Colorado, USA

As second member of the Energy Lab team, I visited the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Denver, starting March 2024. Following up my colleague Nils Nemsow’s earlier visit, with the goal to intensify the collaboration between NREL and KIT, identifying common research fields and diversify the collaboration. While my colleague focused on the electrical side of hydrogen storage systems, my focus was set to expand our groups expertise in the grid simulation domain, specifically the large-scale integration of inverter-based resources (IBRs).

We quickly found common research topics and aligned our efforts to accelerate our research on fast-frequency response services of IBR’s and motivating the deployment of medium-voltage converters for renewable energy sources. These efforts not only created new partnerships within NREL, but also resulted in a new very productive collaborations with the University of Colorado Boulder. Leading to a very fruitful exchange of power system expertise (CU Boulder) and power electronic simulation and modeling knowledge (KIT). At the end of my trip I was also able to join the highly interactive and well known UNIFI Consortium Seminar, revolving around grid-forming converter technology, followed by a subsequent visit of the PES General Meeting in Seattle.

Overall, the visit yielded a lot of scientific value, newly developed models and the familiarization with new methods and software tools, but also a wide range of new contacts within the power system and power electronic engineering community. On the weekends, I also enjoyed a very thorough introduction to the “American way of life” and the different cultural flavors overseas. This included frequent trips to explore the nearby Rocky Mountains and the not so close deserts in the adjacent state of Utah and Arizona.